


Cambodian Mutant Team

by zephyrprince



Category: Marvel 616, X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Cambodian character(s), Character(s) of Color, Gen, Original Character(s), Post-Colonial, Race, female character(s) of color, fic idea, male character(s) of color, prompt, setting: cambodia, story idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 07:26:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2643278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephyrprince/pseuds/zephyrprince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story idea for Cambodian mutant team in the Marvel 616 universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cambodian Mutant Team

**Author's Note:**

> In response to the problem of too many good story ideas and nowhere consistent to write them down, I've decided to start scribing them here. I'm sure I'll follow up and flesh out very few of these (although hopefully I will with some) but I'm happy for anyone else too. Just let me know if you do because I'd love to read them.

So I've often felt irked by the fact that only a few countries in the Marvel universe have state-sponsored mutant/super teams, e.g. the United States (X-Factor), the United Kingdom (Excalibur), and Canada (Alpha Flight, the Flight Program broadly). 

What bothers me about this is that these are white-majority, global north countries that always get a lot of attention in fictional worlds. 

So I was thinking about this while sitting on a flight between Washington, DC and Beijing and I thought it would be interesting to think about what a Cambodian mutant/super team might look like. 

I think it would be cool to locate their origins in the UN-led transition following the Pol Pot massacre. As such, there would be open questions about their relationship with the monarchy and the current government, which, if rocky, could be good plot points. 

That origin story would also shape what their powers might be. I'm thinking about a small team - probably three people - two women and one man with the following powers...

1\. A Healer - This seems essential to the country's recovery after the genocide. I think this one would be the guy. I love when a team's healer is a guy because I hate the trope of a team's one female character being the token woman. I guess that's more in video games than comics but still. 

2\. A Flyer - I love all the images and statues of angels in Cambodian art. They're fun because their wings are often coming out of their legs, which offers a compelling contrast to most representations of angels in the Abrahamic faiths. This would be my one link between this team's abilities and appearance with classical Cambodian imagery. I get nervous when heroes are created to be from a particular cultural context and that link is too strong or its moderately strong but that's the only mutant/hero from that culture. It can all just slip very quickly into racist tokenism.

3\. Telekinetic - In some ways this is the team's only offensive attribute, which I like. Telekinesis is so fun to use in stories because the character can get really creative as their skills grow, using it not just to move objects but to create force fields and energy projects, to manipulate people, etc. I would want this character to have telekinesis but not telepathy so as not to make them too powerful. 

In terms of demographics, as mentioned, they would be a team of two women and one man. I think with such a small team, they should probably all be ethnically Khmer but maybe one of them would make a big deal about how much chinese heritage they have as a kind of play for race-class status, which either annoys the other two or just causes them to role their eyes. The other thing I was thinking about was faith traditions. Apparently there are very few Muslims in Cambodia but when I lived in Phnom Penh, my apartment was right next to a mosque and I would wake up to the call to prayer most days so I guess that's left a pretty big impression on me and it feels like one of them being Muslim might be interesting. 

Finally, in terms of their job, I would love to see stories in which they're trying to help heal the country in the '90s more than stories of them fighting, although it might be interesting to show them getting dragged into fights against their will. The two obvious adversaries would be Khmer Rouge who had gone into hiding and people who were taking advantage of the chaos that followed the genocide for their own gain. 

Additional random thoughts I have: what does Theravada Buddhism have to say about mutants? What role did mutants play in the genocide? Will people not care about mutants in its aftermath because they have more pressing things on their mind or will mutant-phobia serve as a distraction from their other woes? What relationship does this team have with the X-Men, the Avengers, and various mutant factions in Madripore? Do they even know this team exists? Do they have any time to be thinking about Cambodia or do they consider it insignificant in a messed up racist way?


End file.
